Dry leaves and liquor:
The dry leaves smelled positively chocolatey.
Wet leaves have raised a flag of suspicion. Where I enjoyed the complex aroma of dry stored version for minutes, here I just put the lid back on the pot and thought "allright, let's have a look at the taste".
The performance in mouth was a disappointment, sadly. The taste alone is not bad, although it is maybe almost too "low" for me - not the complex higher, cleaner tastes found in the dry stored version. It is woody, chocolatey and aged. The liquor is extremely thick, which is good, but I could not find much more. It feels sort of powdery in mouth, which I generally do not enjoy much. I've been waiting for any significant mouth activity, but it just did not come - even the not-that-great Tong Qing Hao felt much better in this aspect. The aftertaste was not that long and not much interesting.
This tea felt low, smooth and calm to me...actually, too smooth and calm, not far from the country of Boring. Especially given the prize and comparing it to the dry stored version, I feel I did not enjoy this tasting sufficiently.
However, I am still not that knowledgeable about aged tea (and given their prices, it is unlikely I will ever be) so I may be missing something important. For example, I could not tell this is the same tea as the dry stored version. It tastes and feels quite different.
Funny how aged tea changes one's tastes and memories of taste - when drinking this tea, I thought "wow, this really tastes like a shu" - so I brewed two different shu puerhs to verify this observation... and found them to be quite different (sadly, one felt more active and enjoyable than this aged Xiaguan).
Anyway, I'm still glad I tried this tea, but if I had to choose between the dry stored version and this version, I would not hesitate a second and chose the dry stored version.
I have seen it said by many a tea authority that the powdery taste you described above is a sign of great storage and high quality in an aged Sheng. I believe it's often referred to as "Granny Face Powder" or "Talcum Powder" and I found this particular characteristic extremely pleasurable in the 1985 8582 from MTR so perhaps it's a facet of traditional storage that doesn't agree with you. But if I were you I would try a sample of the tea I mentioned above if you haven't tried it yet to give a comparison on what the "Granny Face Powder" characteristic is like in a famous aged recipe to see if what you tasted in the Xiaguan above was an accurate representation of ths great aged characteristic, Nice blog!
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